Killing Desire
by Mister Vix
Summary: Contemplation. Not one of my more well-known hobbies, and with good reason. But still, every day, for greater and greater lengths of time, I would find myself staring into the mirror.


**Killing Desire**

* * *

Disclaimer:   
You are stupid if you think I own anything. Characters, series, the phrase "there is no spoon," the phrase "the end has no end," none of these things belong to my poor self. For I am merely the hopeless fanboy who does nothing in school but pretend to pay attention while he writes fanfiction in his notebooks. Instead of notes. Hee. In case you are curious:   
Phrase "there is no spoon" comes from The Matrix, grand movie. If you haven't at least heard of it I pity you for your living-under-a-rock-ness.   
Phrase "the end has no end" is the name of a song by The Strokes. It is an interesting song.

* * *

Author's Notes:   
It's almost obligatory that you've gotta have a twisted psychofic eventually where the characters are _way_ out of their minds. For those not of the guessing type, POV is Zero's.

* * *

Contemplation. Not one of my more well-known hobbies, and with good reason. But still, every day, for greater and greater lengths of time, I would find myself staring into the mirror.

I don't quire recall when it got put there, or who was the one to put it there. It might have been me. It might have been whoever had this room before I gained rank and got it when it became empty. X or Alia might've put it there for whatever weird reason. Iris might've stuck it there in an attempt at being decorative.

I could stare at myself in it for hours, sometimes. Stare at the creature in the mirror and wait for something to happen. For a long time I had no idea what I was waiting for. Stare at the mirror hanging on the wall, stare at my reflection. Watch the blue eyes change, day by day. What no one ever saw. Wait for the creature in the mirror to give me answers. To tell me what it was I needed. To tell me why I couldn't figure it out, why it was trying to kill me.

Mirrors take a long time to answer, I learned. I suppose it only made sense, seeing as they couldn't exactly _talk_, but that didn't make the waiting less frustrating. The creature in the mirror watched me with eyes that were going slowly mad for want of...what? What was it? What did I lack? What was the desire that was killing me oh-so-slowly, pulling me apart at the seams? I had tried a great number of things, struggling to find it. Find what I craved so terribly.

Nobody ever noticed. Not even X. For some reason...that hurt the worst. That X didn't even know when I was fighting for my life, desperate and failing, trying to find someway—_any_ way—to make it ease up. Just a little. It wasn't even _pain_. Pain I could deal with. No, this was _desire_, this was _need_. And I didn't know _why_, or what it _was!!!_

That was the reason for all of this. This staring, every day, eternal silent bouts with my reflection, locked in thoughts too deep to understand. The mirror-gazing had started a long, long time ago. I didn't remember why anymore. It had gotten worse when I—when I killed Iris. But it had still been under control. But lately...lately something in the air has changed...something about me has changed...but something...X never noticed. This was one question I couldn't turn to him for help with.

And through all this time, I never expected so simple an answer. Not the right answer—not the final answer. But one answer. To keep me whole until I found the truth. When it finally came, it was like lightning; swift and agonizingly bright, amazing and deadly. But first it had to come. And it took its time. The storm had to build until the tension in the air was nearly thick enough to choke on. But I was the only one who couldn't breathe.

It was early in the morning. The sun wasn't up yet. I was perched on the edge of my bed, just watching the mirror with eyes that were too tired to focus just right, consciousness flitting nearer and farther, as it is wont to do when one has spent a row of nights entirely sleepless. It was one of those times when I wasn't anybody. I wasn't Zero, who laughs and jokes with his friends and does stupid stuff. I wasn't the Red Demon, who slays his enemies—and sometimes his allies—in fits of bloodlust and battle-rage. I was just a blonde sometimes-idiot with a sleepy frown and a question on his mind. Sometime during that morning, dream and waking had become indistinctly blurred, the lines washed out for just a brief while, and I'd somehow or other wound up on my feet, leaned against the wall, staring intently into that mirror, silent. The rising sun found me there, not quite awake, not really asleep, and, in the manner of dreams, I imagined to have been insulted by the mirror's eternal, useless silence. My reflection became an object of disgust, those shadowed blue eyes that never held any answers—or hope.

Shattering a mirror is often considered to bring seven years of bad luck, but at that precise moment, all that mattered was my anger at my inability to decipher my own needs. The fear that I really could be going into thicker madness, to the point where I might be a danger. Or simply useless to everyone. Transfixed within a mirror. Therein the answers had to lay; guarded quietly by the creature in the mirror, who watched me with such an impersonal air, neutral to my plight. I smashed the glass piece without thought, my tightly-clenched fist turning the previously unmarred surface into a brief fountain of glittering crystal, which fell to the floor with a soft noise, almost like rain. Disdainfully I swept the frame itself from the wall, watching with a lack of interest as it struck the ground on its edge and rolled a short distance before succumbing to the will of gravity and falling over.

The shards of glass on the floor also seemed a bother, being so vital a part of the destroyed mirror as they were. I reached down and picked up what looked, at a glance, to be the largest in the pile, turning it over carefully in my fingers. Of course, in the early morning such as it was, what seems to be "carefully" might not be so at all, and the shard's jagged edge bit in when I mishandled it, drawing a bright spot of blood on the palm of my left hand.

"Shit," I snarled at the offending glass, but did not immediately drop it, instead watching the blood well slowly up in my hand. I had forever been doling out pain. I had received more than a bit myself, of course—had seen its worst, had seen death. I knew what death held, and it could no longer inspire that much fear in me. Another turn of the glass, another clumsy movement—not so clumsy?—that caused it to sice in. The pain was sharp, brief, cold and hot; dimmed swiftly as superficial, quick to fade altogether. Nearly overcome by a strange sort of twisted curiousity I hadn't know to exist even in the darker recesses of my mind, I held the glass firmly between two fingers, and slowly, deliberately, drew the sharp edge across my right palm. A slight, involuntary flinch at that, and the sting was slower to vanish, but some part of me urged to try it again. I held back, however, just staring, eyes half-lidded as the bright red filled the palm of my cupped hand. I'd seen it spilled so many times there was nothing special about it. I tilted my hand and watched it drip to the floor, before dropping the shard of glass and looking around. Nothing was readily available to clean my hands off with, and I didn't want to walk down the hall like this—people would ask questions. Quite suddenly, I thought I'd best say nothing at all about this. To anyone. Except...except maybe X. Maybe.

I suppose it was my brutal nature that inspired me to use my tongue, lapping my own blood off my skin. Bitter, acrid, vaguely metallic. A taste I'd become fond of, from all my years of fighting and killing. And it wasn't like I hadn't tasted my _own_ blood before—numerous times it had gushed from my mouth, coming up my throat courtesy of some nasty internal injury. This, however, was more...pleasant. Controlled. It was only a small amount, and the scratches I'd made had done no harm; nothing was wrong. Maybe I wouldn't tell X anything. It wasn't like he needed constant updates on everything I was doing, after all...

* * *

"Gah—! Ah, fuck!" I cackled wickedly, tossing the broken training sabre away. Damn piece of shit things couldn't take any kind of punishment at all; they just snapped in half! The unfortunate rookie I'd broken the training sword on did not look like she was going to be getting up any time soon; I had, kinda, hit her over the skull with the stupid thing, and she'd skidded halfway across the floor. Hm. Maybe I _did_ hit her a little bit too hard...

"Zero!" X was giving me a frustrated glare, pausing from his long-winded lecture on whatever.

"What?" I demanded, irritated. "I didn't _kill_ her. She was the one getting cocky!" X just rolled his eyes at me, and I growled, grinding my teeth. I didn't know why, but X's attitude was really pissing me off—waitasec. X's _attitude?!_ What the fuck?! I was the one with the attitude here, I'll readily admit, the one who'd just snapped a training sabre in half over a rookie's head. I shook myself sharply, bitter musing at my own aggressive thoughts. Frustration, irritation, they were very familiar, but they'd never been aimed like this, focused into a passionate poison for the current source of my usually only mild, playful annoyance; X. That wasn't right. That was beyond not-right; that was _wrong_. Zero did not get pissed at X, not for something so stupid as him rolling his eyes at me. Never ever. But...something was...wrong...

I left the training room without a word, people were staring at me. I'd _never_ yelled at X—but I'd come close this time. The snap had been in my voice, harsh and cold. I reserved that for people I really deemed as idiotic for angering me. Why? Why had I reacted like that? I needed to regroup, here, needed to get all this jumble in my head back under control. Something was wrong, and I needed to find out what. Shattered mirror, unnamed...something. The broken mirror, the shard across the skin. I was really edgy. Like I...like I would be caught at something. I mean...it wasn't like anything was..._wrong_...no, something was, wasn't it? But it was...it wasn't the sort of thing people _catch_ you at, like catching you snatching something or catching you jerking off or whatever the fuck you might be caught doing. It wasn't like...it wasn't like I was...I didn't know. I closed the door to my room behind me, blinking at the mess still on the floor. I hadn't cleaned it up...? I could've sworn I'd cleaned that up. Shards of glass, dried blood, the empty mirror frame laying face-down on the ground. I snatched the metal frame, baring my teeth at it like it was all to blame, twisting it. It bent, squealing horridly, folding and rending. With a quick jerk it was in two pieces, metallic shards. Another twist, shredding it again, four pieces. Dropping the other three, twisting that one again, until it was a tapered blade, copper metal gleaming jaggedly. A rough blade, definately, but maybe I could fix that if I worked with it. Twisting it around, fooling with the metal, I nicked myself countless times while trying to streamline its shape, all the while nearly entranced with the bright flash whenever it caught the light. I stripped off my armor, finally recalling that I'd forgotten to remove it earlier, replacing the understuit with a plain outfit, long-sleeved red shirt and jeans. Somebody knocked on the door.

"Zero?" it was X. Marvellous. He knew the code to open the door, but he wouldn't barge right in unless I let him. After all, who knew what I might be doing, hanging out in my room when I was normally off harassing the rookies or something like that?

"Whassup, X? Pop in, why dont'cha?" I asked, slipping the copper blade up my sleeve. Why did I feel like I had to do that, had to hide my little toy I'd been playing with? I dunno. The first thing X noted, of course, would _have_ to be the blood-and-glass mess on the floor. He gasped, eyes going wide, jumping away from it like it would attack him or something. I swear, sometimes it seemed amazing that little green-eyed X was the same Hunter who led a Unit into battle.

"Zero—what—?" he asked, but I just tossed my hand in a dismissive gesture.

"I kinda hit it and it broke. No big deal," I said lightly, not failing to notice how X looked at the shredded pieces of frame. But he decided not to comment, which made me feel both greatly relieved and weirdly...upset. Why? Because X didn't bug me about something I obviously didn't feel like telling? I was starting to freak myself out.

"What happened, Zero?" he asked then, obviously referring to the incident in the training room. I forced a grin that I hoped didn't look at sour and fake as it felt.

"I just haven't been getting as much sleep as I like," I replied with a yawn that was not at all false. "I guess it's made me a little snappish."

"I'll say," X replied, looking at me with concern. Damn, now he was gonna start insisting I get more rest. What a pestersome basta—

Wait. A. Sec. Now. I did not insult X. Not seriously, with venom. It was not done. But I was feeling tense, impatient, wanting to get him out of here, wanting to make him leave, and the mirror blade's point was pressed against my arm, cold and sharp. I wished X would _hurry up_. But now he was watching me funny. He was suspicious. God_damnit_.

"...well, maybe you should try taking a day or two off," he said at last, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Almost. He was gonna let me off for now. Not gonna push it for now. "See you later." Then he was gone, and I locked the door behind him, slumping against it, feeling rattled. I sucked at hiding shit from X. Just the first confrontation, and I'd almost been caught...caught? Caught at what? Caught with a knife up my sleeve? Hell, I always had shit hidden in my clothes, a lot of it possibly dangerous. There was nothing new about me keeping a concealed weapon. Why, then, had the slick metal made me feel so nervous? I slid the blade out of my sleeve, staring at it for a long while. Tilting it slowly, I flicked the point against the palm of my opposite hand, watching the small, shallow cut slowly tinge red. Barely there at all. Then I slid the edge across, not pressing but not holding back, watching as the synthetic skin parted smoothly, seperating into a fine slice, crimson. Bloody crimson. The pain was that brief hot-and-cold, and then I'd pressed my tongue to the small incision, tasting the bitter, acrid blood again. The whole importance was...didn't want things too sweet...better this way, this now, the raw metallic flavor that called to mind my element, my life, my battle. The pain of the fight, every heartbeat forcing heat and liquid from the wounds. A sensation too hot and too cold, a feeling that licked across the skin like flame and froze the inside like ice, full, real, bringing bright to the surface, satisfying a savage craving that raged deeper inside than I knew—

I froze, staring wide-eyed, trembling slightly, wholly absorbed in the sight of my own hand clutched tightly around the base of the makeshift blade, the point buried in the skin of my forerarm, slitted open from the back of my hand halfway to the elbow. My mind gibbered at me, _Oh my God I almost cut my own wrist oh my fucking God oh holy shit—!_ but it didn't seem real. What seemed real—all that seemed real, all that _was_ real, the _only_ real—was a cold fire, a satiety. The thing...the wrong...the killing...desire. The killing desire, it was gone, content, fulfilled. Momentarily. Momentarily? Would it be back? Maybe. If it did come...if it did come back...

It wasn't like I _had_ opened my wrist. And it wasn't like that would have even really _killed_ me if I had. Of course not, reploids are made of tougher stuff than that. The taste of blood seemed richer this time, but still just as wonderfully bitter. I was glad my shirt had long sleeves, glad that I had pushed the sleeve back before making the slice, otherwise...I didn't want people to ask questions. No asking questions. I tugged the sleeve up and, feeling more at ease than I had in a long time, left the room, knife stuck up my sleeve.

* * *

"Hey Z," X greeted, sounding tired, sitting himself down beside me in the spacious but crowded Hunter cafeteria. I made it a point not to hang out here often, but what the Hell, couldn't hurt to go here once in a while, could it?

"Hey X," I replied, balancing a soon on the tip of my index finger for no real reason, watching it teeter slowly back and forth, always threatening but never quite actually falling. A fine balance, if it tilted too far either way it would be lost. Stupid spoon. A fine balance.

One which was disturbed when Axl spotted the two of us and rushed over, full of his usual over-exhuberant enthusiasm to hang out with his "heroes." Don't get me wrong, I like the kid well enough for all his...quirks, but he could be severely annoying at times. Especially when he wined. Which, thankfully, he hadn't done for a while. Right now, though, all I was worrying about was finding that dropped spoon. While I was digging around under the table, trying to figure out where it could possibly have gone short of sprouting wings and flying away, X and Axl had another of their brief, not-quite-terse exchanges. Those two...Axl was okay with X, but X...I dunno. Something about the kid bugged him. Ah, whatever. I couldn't find my damn _spoon!_

"Zero, _what_ are you doing?" X asked when I bumped his leg in my hunt, peering under the table at me curiously—and maybe just a little bit worriedly, but I ignored that. Must find spoon.

"Axl made me drop my fucking spoon," I growled, and X only shook his head slowly, looking slightly amazed. Zero has sunk to a new level of stupid!

"Why don't you just go get another one...?" he suggested, a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Too bad he seemed to've forgotten who he was talking to. "Perfectly reasonable" were not words easily associated with myself.

"It's _my_ damn spoon!" I snarled in vehement response, and then I heard Axl up above, trying his hardest to sound sepulchral.

"There _is_ no spoon."

I hit him in the knee. A little harder than I'd wanted to, but it worked anyway. He yelped, jerking his legs up to avoid further abuse. And revealed that the lost spoon had been under his feet the entire time, and was now several forms of _flat_, because Axl was made of a much heavier metal than a mere spoon. I considered stabbing him with it. Sounded like a plan. I snatched the utensil, then whacked my head off the bottom of the table, having forgotten I was currently _under_ it. Snarling obscenities in a colorful variety of languages, I pulled myself up onto my chair, giving Axl—who was snickering behind his hand—the Evil Eye, threatening to jab him with my rescued spoon. The childlike reploid squeaked in terror and fled, leaving me growling with dissatisfaction and X valiantly trying to keep himself from laughing.

"Onea these days I'm just gonna claw somebody's eyes out," I threatened no one in particular, feeling, as I had three days before in the training room, unduly irritated by the usual antics of my friends. So, swinging my spoon about as though daring the "somebody" from my brief speech to approach, I stood and meandered away, leaving X to himself. Soon I found myself back the hall and in my room, and the copper knife was in my hands. I stared at it uncertainly, flipping it about, wondering at what the Hell was wrong with me, wrong inside my head. Was something out of whack? Some balance thrown off, something gone unstable? I couldn't know unless I got checked out, and...I didn't wanna do that. I didn't want to tell anyone. I didn't need to tell anyone, I could take care of this, it was as simple a matter as I took care of other guilty matters, like that time when some weird prank on part of the entire joined force of X's unit had ended up with him blinking in confusion in nothing but his birthday suit and I had to take a quick trip to my room before I did something incredibly stupid. I avoided thinking about that most of the time, since I...well, y'know, I didn't wanna even wonder if I actually did think about X like that, or if it was just a weird one-time thing, just something random and it wouldn't happen again even in the exact same scenario. I didn't want to question where I stood on the whole matter, but now I was flipping the mirror blade through my fingers while I wondered, and I had to actually force myself to stop, to still, to catch my runaway thoughts and put a leash on them. Cage them up, throw them in the back. Don't deal with that and you won't have to worry about whether or not you can look X in the eye again. I mean...it wasn't like...well, I mean, that wasn't the _only_ time but...it's not...it wasn't a _regular_ subject of my...or...damnit, I'd confused myself, and then, in frustration, my thoughts turned around and around and I couldn't focus and I needed something to cool down the killer and sate the—the—the killing—I... I was very much aware, this time, when I pushed back my sleeve and pressed the tip of the knife to my skin. I kept my eyes tightly closed, as though I was ashamed to see what I was doing to myself, and I pushed down, gritting my teeth and snarling thickly in the back of my throat, cutting in and dragging the blade up my arm, adding a second long mark beside the older one. As soon as I'd done it I knew it wouldn't be enough, it hadn't—hadn't _felt_ like that other one, hadn't been the _same_, hadn't held the unnatural, giddy rush, the satisfying, the craving did not abate. I licked the blood up quickly, greedily almost, and turned my arm over, now forcing myself to look, to watch. The blade's edge flickered wetly as I lowered it to my wrist, caught myself, drew back, did it again—I had to make this go away, didn't I? I couldn't face anyone like this, I had to get rid of the killing desire before I could leave and continue onwards with my little shell of a life. Shell? Broken apart mirror. What had I seen in the mirror? Me. Troubled-eyed me, sharp-tempered me, self-destructive me. Self-destructive? Self-destructive behavior. The knife cut in without my bidding, and I bit back some sort of sound, some form of whimper—no crying, Zero, no tears for this. It's just the means to an end that's no end, the end has no end, but I can put it off for just a little bit longer, this thing that's killing me. I dropped the knife and pressed my mouth to the slice, quickly stopping the bloodflow before it became any sort of a problem, trembling every so slightly. This was sick, wrong, but I wasn't going to stop, because just because something's wrong doesn't mean it's not necissary. A necissary evil. Copper blade and broken mirror and blood on the glass that I still hadn't cleaned up...

* * *

Life goes on. That's something you'll learn pretty quickly when you go through Hell multiple times. No matter how often you get thrown down and stomped face-first into the dirt, no matter how badly broken you think you must be, you'll wind up getting up—either by your will or someone else's—and the end result is always the same. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, or so they say, I'm not so sure about that anymore. Hello, I'm Zero. I'm a Maverick Hunter, one of the best that ever existed. I love the confrontation, the heat of the battle. It makes me not think beyond immediate survival for a while, erases trouble for the brief span of combat. It's one of my few loves, because I tend to avoid being overly fond of most things. I've had quite a number of important things—important people—taken from me along the course of my life, and I avoid allowing that to happen in as many ways as possible. Hello, I'm Zero. I'm an idiot blonde with a violent streak and I tend to pull pranks which aren't so safe and I drag my little group of friends into it whether they want to be involved or not. But I mean well, I swear, even if that fact's not readily apparent very often! I just get a little carried away some...a lot of the time, and I carry everyone else away with me. It makes for great fun. I'm not really an alcoholic but I drink more than what could be counted as my fair share, I suppose, but since I'm a reploid I don't have to worry about the permanent damage from that particular bad habit. A night of binge drinking always seems like a good idea right up until you wake up the next morning. Hello, I'm Zero. I'm a freak with a habit of hurting himself and not telling anybody about it. Reploids don't typically collect scars because their bodies can just be repaired and repatched, but I don't tell anybody about what I do to my body, so the cuts and slices stay untreated and they're the equivalent of scars. Lots and lots of them, so I wear long sleeved shirts most of the time to hide the biggest concentration, the ones I'm my wrists. I'm not trying to kill myself. I've been dead before and it's nothing particularly exciting to aim for. Hello, I'm Zero. I'm psychotic and I hallucinate sometimes, because I broke the mirror and threw away all the pieces—even that copper knife—and I keep thinking it's back, or pieces of it are, and it won't just _go away_. I get that creepity feeling, the one where you're being stared at, pretty often, but that's just a stupid little thing and it's got nothing to do with this. What's really got to do with it is the desire, the _killing_ desire, the killer, that huddles up in the back of my mind when it's not tormenting me with wordless rushes of...something...something... Hello, I'm Zero, and I think I've lost my mind. I've thought too much and it's gone on strike from a sudden rise in the workload. I think X can tell what's going on and I hope he does. I hope he comes and stops me. I want him to, I want him to tell me what I'm doing is wrong, because I can't do it myself. I'm just a little too addled, a little too broken, to tell myself I should probably stop doing this. To tell myself there's gotta be another way to alleviate—to _cure_—the killer. I think I know what the only other way is and I'm more afraid of it than I am of the blood loss, than I am of the occasional fits of random passing out, the pain that can never be really as good as it was the first time. I'm like a druggy in that respect, just trying to get to the next one, trying to live and scrape myself together between attacks or incidents or whatever they might be called, addicted and afraid and a ruin. A total ruin, huddled in his little shell and laughing like a maniac at this pathetic thing whenever he forgets that this pathetic thing is _him_. A sad life. Hello, I'm Zero.

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, back against the wall beside the door, one arm up in the air, watching in a sort of disconnected fashion as I pulled back my sleeve again. Goddamn myself, Goddamn the blade—some pocket knife I forgot where I'd gotten it—that was held tightly in a trembling hand, Goddamn all the old cuts marring my skin. I looked terrible and I felt terrible and I was terrible and a sick creature for doing this. One cut, stop the bleeding, two, stop it again, three—

The door slid open without so much as a "by your leave," but I didn't spare it a glance. I heard the sharp intake of breath, the half-denial that was strangled in its owners haste to grab my hand and wrench the blade free, and there was X, staring straight into my eyes, blue eyes that were half-lidded and vague, the way they got whenever I had to do this. I wanted to be somewhere else, and he hadn't given me a chance to stop the bleeding of the third cut yet so the red just flowed over his hand where he had a hold of my wrist. I felt like some weak, sickly little child who'd been caught doing wrong, too pathetic to really even try to defend myself. But I could feel the tears in my eyes and I blinked them away and they refused to vanish.

"Why, Zero?" the question was all X needed to say to make me crumble, crumble against him, sobbing like a wretch, and he put his arms around me. I couldn't stop, shaking and gasping between harsh sobs, eyes tightly shut. Nothing changed there, for the longest time, except X held tight to my wrist to stop the bleeding, nothing changed...everything changed... Gradually I cried myself out, my head layed on X's shoulder, just staying there and not bothering to pull away or anything stupid like that. Why bother? X was here, had finally come and seen what I'd done, he wouldn't let me hurt me anymore. "Why, Zero?" I tried. I tried to explain about it, the want, the need, the killer in my mind, holding it off, trying to stay together by pulling myself apart. I don't even know what I got out, but it was enough that X understood; there was something missing in me, something wrong with me, and I was going to die from it if I didn't find it. But I'd...I'd... "What is it?" Simple question, and the answer was just as simple. I wrapped my arms around X, shaking with renewed tears, held onto him because I didn't think I could tell him out loud what he was—answers, broken mirror, cause and effect. "...it's me." I could only nod, and we stayed there for a long time. Stayed there and held each other. It was like the time in the morning when I wasn't anyone; we weren't anyone in particular, just two people, one had a few more problems than normal.

* * *

"Alright?" Lifesaver asked me, and I just nodded, staring at the ground. I would've turned and run if X hadn't been there, but I don't really know why. This was the way you were supposed to do it; when something's wrong with you, you have to go and find out what's wrong and how to fix it. Well, we'd found out what was wrong...sort of...and it wasn't too surprising. I was, after all, an old reploid—if you call me outdated I swear I'll make you regret it—and old things break after a while if you don't take care. I hadn't been taken care, and something had gotten screwed up, something working wrong. It was a gradual thing, my mind eating itself to pieces, year by year getting worse, until it reached the point I'd gotten to now. The point where something so simple as attraction can set off a fit. It hadn't helped that I'd kept it all buried, thoughts about X, for so long—that just made it more of an obsession, a fixation, but because I couldn't quite focus on things too long anymore, it'd gone directionless. So now here I was, and I knew what was wrong; I'd just gotten run down, mental stress—resurrection, forgotten pasts, more trauma than I'd known I'd had—had gotten to be too much for me to handle and I'd broken. Lifesaver didn't...really know how to fix it. Might not be able to. I might stay like this forever, but I was okay. I was put on extended leave from the Hunters—medically unfit to remain. X was coming with me, I hadn't managed to get him to reveal whether he'd just gathered up all his vacation time or if he really was leaving the Hunters until I got better. He was certain I'd get better, if I just layed off this hectic lifestyle, just tried to take better care of myself. I didn't know about that, but I didn't say anything. The silence that stretched out was long, so finally I nodded again and then I left, and X followed. I didn't really have much of any stuff to gather up—armor, weaponry, all of that was staying back here. So whatever I did have was thrown into a box in some semblage of order, and that was that. X'd already prepared yesterday, Signas had told him of my being sent away before he'd told me. For a moment I just looked at my arm—I was wearing a t-shirt for the first time in a long while. All the scars were gone, of course, repaired, not a trace left of them. I shook my head again and grabbed the box all my stuff was in, and, with X's arm wrapped comfortingly around my shoulders, I left. And I hoped that damn broken mirror would just leave me the Hell alone.

Wishful thinking.

* * *

Endnotes:   
And with that, ta-dah.


End file.
